“Consumers and the information technology industry will pick up
the tab for a $30 billion increase in software costs if Windows is
broken up, according to a paper written on behalf of the
Association for Competitive Technology.
“‘People are living in a fool’s paradise if they think that
the Windows standard will remain intact if the product is divided
among multiple companies,’ said economist Stan Liebowitz, a
professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. ‘Just look at what
has happened with the Unix and Linux operating systems, where
competing versions are nowhere near compatible. This example
provides absolute and directly relevant evidence of what we would
see in a fragmented Windows marketplace.'”
“Liebowitz says arguments that competing versions of Windows
will produce only minor changes are unsupported. ‘Even with just
one company producing Windows, we’ve seen an average 20 percent
increase in functionality a year. It will be impossible for
competing operating systems to remain compatible with one another
while they are adding functionality at these rapid rates.’